essays | opinions | musings

Hurricane Prep

I’m from the Midwest. We have the occasional tornado, some really bad snow storms — but hurricanes? Of course not. On Thursday, when it was declared that the path of the hurricane was headed straight for New York City and its surrounding areas, I lost my mind.

Natural disasters scare me, and despite having plenty of relatives and friends in Florida, all of whom have been through storms of more frightening magnitudes, hurricanes freak me out the most. You see, tornadoes and earthquakes have metrics, but they don’t have names. We name hurricanes, which makes me attribute other human characteristics to the storm, and at this point, I’m afraid that Irene can hear me cursing her name.

New York is getting gloomier by the hour, with pretty dark skies right now, and short but strong scattered showers.